We're all dying. Every day. Every minute. Every blessed sodden breath takes us closer to our eternal reward. Walter White, though, he's dying more quickly than most of us. In every way.

Considering what Walter's become, it's easy to forget who he was, not so very long ago. When Breaking Bad began, Mr. White was a high-school chemistry teacher. The man drove a Pontiac Aztec. He might as well have had a scarlet L inked across his forehead.

Then metastatic lung cancer came for him. A monstrous and inexplicable unfairness. But what happened next was worse. Walter's cancer — real enough — became metaphorical, too. This tumor didn't just choke his breath. It ate his soul from the inside out.

Breaking Bad is one of cable's Holy Trinity, along with The Wire and The Sopranos. But Breaking Bad might be the best of all because Walter's turn to darkness has been so unexpected, and so complete. Tony Soprano was born to be a mob boss. Jimmy McNulty is good police with every beat of his lying heart.

But Walter White? How did an ordinary father and husband become Heisenberg? How did he turn into a man who melted away a child's body in a barrel of acid? I've always thought that moment was the point of no return, worse even than the jailhouse murders. Walter's a father himself. Walter has always pretended he took this course for his family — even though his wife now hates him with venom that could cut through steel. So: Dump the boy's corpse somewhere, call the cops. At least give that little boy's parents the chance to bury their child.

But Heisenberg had meth to cook. 99.44 percent pure. Best around.

Did lung cancer destroy Walter White? Or did it liberate him to become the man he was all along, deep inside? If he'd been in Poland in 1942, would he have strapped his death's-head insignia on and smiled as he watched the ovens cook?

I don't know if anyone can answer that question. Not even Vince Gilligan. Certainly Hank can't, and the question briefly panicked him this episode. At first I thought Hank was scared of Walter. But violence doesn't frighten Hank. He's survived bullets and axe-wielding Mexican assassins. And he happily leveled Walter with a right hook when he had the chance. No, what terrified him was the realization that his brother-in-law had fooled him so monstrously, that the world must be a very different place than he'd imagined. I don't even know who I'm looking at, he said to Walter. None of us do.

Now Walter — and those of us watching him, trying to figure him out — have come to a very strange place. The first four-and-a-half seasons were the crime. These final eight episodes will be the punishment.

Precious little actually happened in this episode. I sensed the writers were taking a breath, steeling themselves for the horrors to come. But I say this with confidence: Walter White will die. The opening, in which he walked through the remains of his ruined house — that was a man looking at the inside of his coffin. (And the shot of the kids skating in the empty pool was a great contrast. Breaking Bad doesn't get the credit it deserves for its cinematography, which is regularly gorgeous.)

The question, then, is not what, but who. I can't imagine Walter doing the deed himself. He's too much a narcissist, and he has committed to this road, wherever it takes him. I see four serious candidates: Hank, Skyler, Jesse, and those tumors riding shotgun in his lungs. Skyler isn't tough enough. Having the cancer take him might be fitting, since the cancer started all this — but it would be unsatisfying visually and dramatically.

Which leaves Hank and Jesse. The arsenal Walter's toting in the back of that brown Caddy suggests a confrontation with law enforcement. Or maybe a Marine regiment. But I hope Jesse does the deed. Walter cares about no one else in the world. But Jesse is the son he wishes he had, and in his twisted way, Walter wants to protect Jesse. Why else would he lie so vehemently to Jesse about killing Mike?

Like all good psychopaths, Walter has convinced himself that his prior crimes don't matter as long as he lives decently in the future. (Of course, his promise to be a better person lasts only until he's bucked. "Tread lightly.") But Jesse can't forget what they've done. Jesse has grown a conscience, and it's killing him. And if Jesse is to find any kind of peace for the rest of his life — even in prison — he's going to have to destroy the monster he knows better than anyone else.

Oedipus, in the desert. We'll know in seven episodes. And if this episode is any guide, they'll be great.